The Harvester Ghost Cat Figurine - Barley

The Harvesters appear only after the first grain has been cut.

Old Lammas records speak of pale figures emerging at dusk from the newly shorn fields, where the standing wheat had concealed them throughout the growing season. They are seldom witnessed before the final cart has departed. By then, only stubble, scattered husks and the long shadows of the harvest remain.

Earlier custodians believed the Harvesters kept account of all that had been gathered and all that had been left behind. They were treated neither as omens nor intruders, but as quiet witnesses to the turning year: spirits of labour completed, stores replenished and the first promise that winter might yet be endured.

Their appearance marks the opening of the harvest season at Lammas. They remain only briefly, vanishing as the fields are cleared and the late-summer nights begin to lengthen.

Barley was first recorded in a granary on the first night after threshing, curled upon the newly filled sacks as though he had always belonged there.

Each morning, small tracks were found in the spilled grain, though no mouse entered the stores while Barley remained. Old records associate him with the protection of winter provisions, and with the custom of leaving a loose handful of barley by the threshold for whatever kept watch after dark.

Barley the ghost cat figurine is just short of 7 cm in height.